Sunday, Nov 11, 2012 - 4:30 AM
"In Sync"
Systems of synchronization occur throughout the animate and inanimate world. The regular beating of the human heart, the swaying and near collapse of the Millennium Bridge, the simultaneous flashing of gangs of fireflies in Southeast Asia: these varied phenomena all share the property of spontaneous synchronization. This unit shows how synchronization can be analyzed, studied, and modeled via the mathematics of differential equations, an outgrowth of calculus, and the application of these ideas toward understanding the workings of the heart. D